30 Weeks Pregnant
Baby size : A large head of cabbage
How I Feel : Invincible and vulnerable. All at the same time!
*If you’re offended by ‘bad’ language skip the first paragraph, no, the first two paragraphs……. OK just don’t read this*
My dear sweet nana had a great saying, ‘If it looks like a cunt and it smells like a cunt, chances are, it’s a cunt’.* Excuse me for mixing my metaphors, but I refer of course to that trojan horse of a friend/family member, who rocks up with a vintage bottle of joy, then proceeds to vomit gifts of stress, guilt and upset all over your brand new white carpet, leaving you to deal with the fallout and mess. I mean, isn’t emotional manipulation THE BEST?!
What I’m wondering is, will motherhood and my ‘higher priority’ demand I endorse less crap from these people? Will I become fantastic at wheedling the feckers out before the vomiting begins? Right now, I’m all Empathy and Flowers, trying to analyse and understand in order to make sense of their actions - there is great love there after all. Sometimes though, I get weary. I don’t want to figure out the whys of why you’re being an aresehole. Just STOP BEING AN ARESHOLE. I’m bored of trying to understand. Let’s face it, sometimes, SOMETIMES, empathy is overrated.
Luckily, I also got time with non trojans this week. I swanned home, grinning like a mated bull, at 2am Saturday morning, happily soaked in wine and vodka after a night out in Soho. Ah, just like the old days. Unfortunately/fortunately I had only a sniff of wine and some virgin cocktails. The wine and vodka soaking came courtesy of some of my favourite women, unafraid to spill a drop of alcohol for the greater good of a messy night. I have to say I have not missed hungover days. Couch bound, carb filled, hellish days, full of vulnerability and the dreaded The Fear, a sacrifice I gave willingly to the gods of wine and whiskey. But I do miss the nights, oh the nights...
Now, vulnerability can be a fantastic thing, however, here are two occasions when it’s definitely not cool. One - the aforementioned The Fear. Two - when you’re on the tube with a massive bump, a fist up your arse (baby’s) and an inability to sit with your legs closed. Of course, this is when a slightly inebriated city slicker in a suit starts hitting on you. Brilliant! There I was, minding my own business trying not to fart out loud as is the pregnancy curse, and over he comes. I wonder, what gave him the ‘come hither’ look? The oversized baggy jumper? The worn black leggings? The mucky trainers? The fart smell I'm pretending is the chubby guy across the way? I guess that’s the ‘she was asking for it’ argument blown out of the water! I just got off the tube. What I should have done was climb astride him, look deep in his eyes and in a husky Demi Moore whisper, say ‘Hey lover, I’m going to pop out a kid in ten weeks, but until then, my vagina is as tight as the top of a hot water bottle, so how about we go at it right here, right now?’ Mmmmm maybe I’m not that brave…
Having sort of come to terms with Catheters and perineum slicing, our antenatal class covered C-sections this week. Aha! I thought, maybe this will be the easy ‘too posh to push’ birth I can fall back on should it all get too much in the delivery room. Heeheeheehahaha. What shower of eejits are floating this idea? A C-section sounds horrendous!!! Like being shredded-by-a-lawn-mower horrendous. It’s full on abdominal surgery for crying out loud! After surgery isn’t it the legal requirement to stay in bed watching Breaking Bad for two weeks? Well, Walt isn’t going to change nappies! Jesse isn’t going to feed baby! Hank isn’t going to bring me pizza! I admit it, I have wronged and chastised many women on the telly. All because they ‘moaned’ about having a section. Now I TOTALLY get it. What martyr on a cross could not be mildly tempted by a teeny tiny moan of fear about being cut open and immediately made primary carer for a helpless blob of lovely neediness? Labour is like a Monty Python sketch everyone is ignoring. ‘Oh, look! I’ve had my arm chopped off but don’t worry about me, I’m off to do the milk run. Oh, there goes my leg too, never mind, I’ll hop...’ I have no desire to be dramatic but neither would I like to be dismissed because ‘people do it every day’. Can we fall somewhere in the middle please?
The more I learn the more I’m in awe of this birthing process. Why are all the speeches in movies about going into battle specifically about war? It'll certainly feel like marching into battle when I go into labour, no matter how I do it. Blood - check! Guts - check! Glory (in form of baby) - check! It’s a fecking battle! Of course I’ll want cooing, fluttering and reassuring, but god damn it I want some inspiration!!! Where is my ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’? My ‘They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM’? Where?! If I knew Judi Dench** I’d beg her to paraphrase Aragorn…
‘Sisters of gas & air, of cesareans. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come, when the courage of women fails, when we forsake our ideals and all bonds of sisterhood, but it is not this day! Hours of placentas and vaginal tears, when the age of women comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we push! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, PUSH, women of the world!’
*my Nana would NEVER have used this word. She called her poo her coakseorum, and her breasts her kinoblers! She was brilliant.
** Two friends are working with Judi right now and I am sick for them. It must be truly awful. No, seriously, Stav, Mike, tell her I love her!
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